Dr. Kimberly Kappler-Hewitt (School of Education) received new funding from the NC Alliance for School Leadership Development for the project “Principal Preparation for Excellence and Equity in Rural Schools (PPEERS).” Dr. Carl Lashley is co-principal investigator on the project.
Rural schools face disadvantages when recruiting prospective principals, and rural schools receive significantly fewer applications than larger districts (Pjanowski, Hewitt, & Brady, 2009). With the challenges rural districts face in recruiting and retaining principals expected to grow more acute in coming decades (Cruzeiro & Boon, 2009), the development of rural principal pipelines is imperative (Wood, Find, and Mirecki, 2013). Drawing on this research, Principal Preparation for Excellence and Equity in Rural Schools (PPEERS) involves a partnership amongst 13 rural districts that struggle to find and keep effective principals for high-needs schools, the University of North Carolina Greensboro’s (UNCG) Department of Educational Leadership and Cultural Foundations, and the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB). The partnership aims to develop strong, sustainable leadership pipelines within these districts. PPEERS 3 (2020-2022) will prepare and license 20 new principals for high-needs, rural schools.
